More than 27,000 people across the nation recently wrote letters to urge Taco Bell to quit pushing sugary drinks and add healthier drink options, like low- or no-fat milk. The letters highlighted Taco Bell’s recent beverage rollout of sugar-filled drinks, like the favorite Manzanita Sol, and subsequent aggressive marketing of these drinks on social media. Letters were collected by Salud America!, an obesity research and communication network funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Salud America! leaders delivered 27,748 letters to Taco Bell this week. We will post their response here in coming days. Why is this effort so important? Studies find that Latino kids already drink more sugary drinks each day than their white peers, and have higher rates of ...
One word can describe Taco Bell’s drink lineup: Sugary. Taco Bell recently added six new sugary drinks and became the first fast-food giant to offer Manzanita Sol, an apple-flavored soda most popular in Mexico, a nod to it menus. Manzanita Sol packs a whopping 56 grams of sugar in a 16-ounce drink, and four of the six new drinks contain more than 20 grams of sugar in the chain’s smallest available size. Tell Taco Bell to stop offering Manzanita Sol and other sugary drinks to customers! Kids don’t need more sugar-bombs disguised as thirst-quenchers, they already drink many sugary drinks, pushing up their risk for obesity and diabetes. Taco Bell continues to launch new unhealthy beverages, including new flavors of sugar-filled slushy drinks called Freezes. The company ...
More than 23,000 people across the nation recently wrote letters to urge the Kellogg Co. to stop marketing sugary foods to families on their Dias Grandiosos website. The letters, which highlighted how Kellogg’s targets Spanish-speaking moms with family-oriented messages for meals that are high in sugar and salt, were collected by Salud America!, an obesity research and communication network funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Salud America! leaders delivered the 23,000 letters to Kellogg’s this week. We will post their response here in coming days. Why is this effort so important? Food and beverage marketing influences kids’ diets and disproportionately focuses on unhealthy products, studies show. We believe families need healthy food options—rather ...
Moms often have final say over family meals. Marketers know this. Kellogg Co., the name behind brands like Fruit Loops, Pop-Tarts, and Eggo Waffles, has a new digital marketing campaign, Días Grandiosos, that targets Spanish-speaking moms online and on social media like Facebook and Pinterest with recipes they tout as saludable (healthy). But many of their meals are high in sugar and salt. In other words, NOT saludable. Tell Kellogg to stop pushing moms to give their kids unhealthy, sugary foods, and instead add more healthy options! Almost all the campaign’s recipes—19 of the 29 recipes on its website—qualify as desserts based on their high sugar content, according to an independent nutritionist. Like: Five recipes using Rice Krispies and marshmallows;
...
Summer is here. Do you know what your child is drinking at summer camp? The American Camp Association (ACA), the country's leading camp resource and accreditation group, requires camps to take many steps to ensure the safety and well-being of young people. They also offer suggestions on how camps can help kids be active and eat healthy foods. But ACA does NOT require camps to have a healthy beverage policy to gain accreditation. That means, for the more than 2,400 ACA-accredited camps nationwide, none are required to refrain from serving campers sugary sodas, juices, or flavored milk. Research shows many kids already consume more sugary drinks on average (see video), so they have more to lose when camps recruit families and then provide unhealthy sugary drinks during this ...